This armor reflects several waves of Western influence in Japan. The helmet, modeled on a late sixteenth-century Dutch cabasset, is by the Japanese armorer Saotome Iyetada, whose signature is found inside the bowl. The cuirass appears to be of early nineteenth-century European manufacture. These older elements, completed by more modern ones, were decorated with Buddhist divinities and literary figures by a Japanese craftsman using etching, which is a Western process. The helmet bears the badge of the Arima family, daimyo (lords) of Kurume.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Signature: Helmet signed inside the bowl: Saotome Iyetada.

Provenance

Ex coll.: Louis B. and Edith McCagg.

References

Dean, Bashford, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Catalogue of the Loan Collection of Japanese Armor. New York, 1903. pp. 67–71, fig. 24.